Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Clinton-Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Lords Chamber

I very rarely disagree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. However, most of these women were at a level where it was not about children but aged parents, and they said that they might well need to work nine or 10 months of the year rather than 12 months; that they shared care of aged parents with siblings but there was a time when they would need to be fully responsible and therefore would not be able to be fully committed to the work. I cannot believe that in this society we cannot recognise that people—women, men, whoever they are—should be able to perform their family responsibilities and work at the most senior levels in our judiciary. That should be a message that our senior judiciary sends out.

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

I speak as a mere solicitor, but I very much support everything that the former members of the Supreme Court and other members of the judiciary have said. It is absolutely essential that we should retain flexibility. I am usually on the same side as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, but not on this occasion. Flexibility is a better word than the one that the Government are using.

Attracting part-time judges in the higher courts will not happen. If it does happen, it will not be to the credit of the higher courts. I support women in every area of work. Women have been an invaluable resource as far as the solicitors’ profession is concerned. Why should they not inhabit the Supreme Court and other higher courts in the land? It would do us a great favour if that were to happen.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger. I, too, feel a great sense of trepidation, also being a “mere” solicitor, non-practising.

It is very rare that I agree with those who have spoken on the other side of this argument but I want to respond to the point that has been made about the perception of women who wish to work flexibly. My own experience has been that those who work to a slightly different pattern almost invariably turn themselves inside-out to work harder than is humanly possible in order to make it quite clear that they are not taking advantage of the arrangements that have been made for them.

In this walk of life, as in any, if we deny that cohort of people the opportunity, we are not only denying them, we are denying the whole of society the opportunity to use their life experience as well as their professional experience.